US Fighter Jets Intercept Korean Airlines Flight After Bomb Threat

SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg via Getty Images(VANCOUVER, British Columbia) — Two U.S. fighter jets scrambled to meet a Korean Airlines Boeing 777 Tuesday night after a bomb threat was reported shortly after the plane took off from Vancouver, British Columbia.

With the help of F-15 fighter jets, the Seoul-bound plane made a safe emergency landing at Comox, a Canadian Forces base on Vancouver Island, around 5:30 p.m. local time.

No explosives were found and all 149 people on board Flight 72 were unharmed.

The incident comes at a time of heightened tension on the Korean Peninsula.

Korean Airlines is one of several airlines that are changing their flight paths to avoid a long-range rocket that North Korea is launching, possibly as early as Thursday.

On Wednesday morning, engineers began pumping fuel into the rocket. North Koreans say the rocket is putting a satellite into space, but the U.S. and others don’t believe it and are calling it a provocation and violation of U.N. resolutions prohibiting nuclear and ballistic missile activity.﻿